The return to normal between Algeria and Spain is acted by a meeting of the heads of government of the two countries. Nadir Larbaoui was received this Tuesday, July 1 by Pedro Sanchez in Madrid. It is the first time that a meeting at such a level has been held since the crisis between the two countries in March 2022.
Nadir Larbaoui, Algerian Prime Minister, and Perdo Sanchez, president of the Spanish government, met on the sidelines of the Fourth Conference of the United Nations on the financing of development which is held in Spain.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s services, Pedro Sanchez transmitted through his Algerian counterpart his greetings to the President of the Republic Abdelmadjid Tebboune and expressed his gratitude to him for accepting the invitation to participate in the conference with a high level of representation.
Sanchez expressed his “determination to work together to strengthen bilateral relations in various fields, especially in the context of current international circumstances”, adds the same source.
Sunday, the king of Spain Felipe VI received all the chiefs of delegations participating in the conference, including Mr. Larbaoui, that he responsible for transmitting his greetings and his feelings of consideration to President Tebboune.
Algiers and Madrid have gone through a political crisis which lasted more than two years and which has detected economic exchanges between these two important partners. It all started in March 2022 when the government of Pedro Sanchez broke without notice with the historical neutrality of Spain in the Western Sahara file. In a message to King Mohamed VI, Sanchez brought the official support of Madrid to the autonomy plan presented by Morocco in 2007.
Algiers reacted first with the recall of his ambassador to Madrid then by the suspension, in June of the same year, of the treaty of friendship and good neighborhood signed between the two countries in 2022. The decision is followed by the almost total blocking of trade outside hydrocarbons. Before the crisis, Algeria imported Spain every year for nearly $ 3 billion in goods.
Algeria-Spain: progressive return and noise to normal
The crisis did not affect gas deliveries, of which Algeria is an important supplier of Spain via the Medgaz gas pipeline. Algeria remained without ambassador to Madrid for 20 months. The appointment of Abdelfatah Deghmoum, in November 2023, was perceived by observers as the beginning of thaw of the bilateral relationship. The return to normal was indeed started but it was very slowly, gradually.
The Association of Banks and Financial Establishments (ABEF), which had instituted the freezing of trade in June 2022, raised it by another note in November 2023. The exchanges gradually resumed in January 2024, first by the import of Spain of inputs for the poultry sector, of the beef then other products. Spain has once again become an important supplier of Algeria in beef. When Algeria decided, last March, to import 1 million sheep heads in anticipation of the AID-EL-ADHA 2025, it was towards Spain, as well as Romania, that it turned. In 2024, exchanges jumped 142% compared to 2023, according to the chief of diplomacy José Manuel Albares.
On the political level, the two countries have also been in stages in the process of returning to normal of their relationship. It was not until February 2025 to attend the first ministerial level visit since the start of the crisis. Algerian interior minister Brahim Merad went to Madrid on an official visit to discuss with his Spanish counterpart Fernando Grande-Marlaska questions related to immigration. The visit also had a high diplomatic scope.
Unlike the current crisis with France, that with Spain was not marked by verbal slippages. On the contrary, those responsible for the two countries have watched not to poison the relationship. Last February, President Tebboune, in a message of congratulations to the writer Yasmina Khadra for a prize which was awarded to him in Valence, described Spain as “friendly country”. With the meeting of the chiefs of government of the two countries, Algiers and Madrid acted a return to normal started, without noise and without burning the stages several months ago. There is now only the lifting of the frost on the friendship treaty between the two countries.
